New Delhi. Diabetes is associated with a 25–75% increase in the relative risk of hospitalization due to pneumonia, Dr K K Aggarwal, President Heart Care Foundation of India.

Quoting a study published in the journal Diabetes Care (August edition), Dr Aggarwal said that it is important to give flu and pneumococcal vaccine to diabetics, especially those patients with longer diabetes duration. It is equally important to control diabetes adequately to prevent pneumonia-related hospitalization among diabetic patients.

In the study Dr. Jette B. Kornum from Aarhus University Hospital, Aalborg and colleagues identified 34,239 individuals with a pneumonia–related hospital admission and 342,390 individuals from the general population who served as a control group. The study showed that individuals with diabetes had a 26% higher risk of pneumonia–related hospitalization compared with those without diabetes.

The risk of pneumonia–related hospitalization was increased by 4.4–fold in subjects with type 1 diabetes and by 1.2–fold in those with type 2 diabetes.

The maximum risk was related to longer duration of diabetes (more than 9 years) with poor glycemic control (A1C > 9%) .

The risk was 37 % higher in diabetics of over 9 yrs duration and 60% higher when the A1C was over 9% as compared to 22% when the A1C was lower than 7%. A1C is the measure of average blood sugar of the last three months and should be kept lower than 7%.